Tagged: economics

As a new year begins, it is easy to consider that the prospects for freedom in America and in many other parts of the world to seem dim. After all, government continues to grow bigger and more intrusive, along with tax burdens that siphon off vast amounts of private wealth.

John Stossel spoke of being trained as a liberal consumer reporter. Believing rules were needed because life was complex, Stossel whole heartedly endorsed regulations, only to watch them fail. As to the The Department of Consumer Affairs, Stossel spoke about licensing requirement for repair shops. Licensing, however, didn’t protect customers. 30 years later repair shops, despite being licensed, were still fooling consumers and not giving consumers what they were promised to expect.

There are many dimensions to the hack of Sony that, by all accounts, now appears to be a North Korean cyberattack. Certainly, the attack ought to make us all aware that, regardless of debates about the niceties of the labels applied, the U.S. has entered a new era in which cyberwarfare (and response to cyberattacks) will constitute an important element of our national security strategy.

Why is it that government grows in size and scope, and is so difficult to stop or reverse? Political economist, Gordon Tullock, who passed away on November 3, 2014 at the age of 92, was a path-breaker is explaining how and why big government keeps getting bigger.

Just in time for Halloween, director Ivan Reitman’s classic film “Ghostbusters” marks its 30th year in the American zeitgeist. A rags-to-riches tale of a band of plucky ghost-hunters saving the world from a pagan god resembling David Bowie and an oversized confectionary mascot, “Ghostbusters” has inspired a cinematic sequel, two animated cartoon spinoffs, and at least three video games.

Over a scholarly career that has spanned a half a century, Kirzner has enriched our understanding of the theory of the competitive process, the role of the entrepreneur in bringing about market coordination and innovation, the nature of capital and interest, the dangers resulting from the regulated economy, and the importance of individual freedom for the open-ended creativity that enhances the general human condition.

In the Hunger Games franchise of movies and young-adult novels, political power is concentrated within the Capitol; citizens there revel in pageantry and pomp while their fellow Americans suffer from the dire, impoverishing consequences of the government’s policies. That same sort of sedimentation of power and money into the nation’s capital is happening in the current-day United States.

While John Fund was in Chicago speaking to the Chicago Lawyers’ Chapter of the Federalist Society, co-author Hans von Spakovsky was at his venue in Toledo, Ohio, doing the same to promote their book: Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department, which catalogues the abuses of power at the Department of Justice under Attorney General Holder. Set forth is how Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr has politicized the Justice Department and put the interests of left-wing ideology and his political party ahead of the fair and partial administration of justice.

One of the great fallacies arrogantly believed in by those in political power is the notion that they can know enough to manage and command the lives of everyone in society with better results than if people are left to live their own lives as they freely choose.

The business of business is business. But that does not mean a business should unconcerned with outcomes or the world around it. It is evident that business concerns form an integral part of every aspect of human interaction.

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has laid bare the woeful state of European defense. For decades Europe has been reliant on an American security blanket, one that has put Europe’s various defense departments to sleep. Putin’s recent belligerence has given them a loud wake-up call. What they will do about the aggression on their frontier remains to be seen.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), the unelected oversight group created by the Dodd-Frank Act to monitor and regulate firms deemed to pose systemic risk to the economy (ie. “too big too fail”), has decided begun to expand its remit beyond what even the law’s authors had imagined.

Whether the price of gold is seen as a measurement of the value of a precious metal or as a report card on the economic, monetary, and fiscal policies that go into determining the value of the dollar, it’s interesting to think about what the trends, short-term and long-term, may mean.

It’s been a month since the billionaire triumvirate of Tom Steyer (pictured), Henry Paulson and Michael Bloomberg introduced their ballyhooed Risky Business report on the climate, and after all the op-eds, blog posts and public interviews so far, all that can be said about it is that it is already an empty, meaningless PR campaign upon which the financial hot shots have wasted their money.

The myriad executive branch Departments, Agencies, Commissions and Boards have been in omni-directional fashion vastly exceeding their authority – doing things that are clearly the Constitutional purview of (amongst other others) the legislative and judicial branches.

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, my name is Bernard Weinstein and I am the Associate Director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University (SMU) and an adjunct professor of business economics at SMU’s Cox School of Business. Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you today.

In rural areas, there is often a heated debate over economic development that essentially boils down to a choice between industrial jobs and tourism jobs. Both come with advantages and disadvantages, but to pit these two sectors against each other in an either-or discussion is a false dichotomy. My hometown provides a good example of how industry and tourism can coexist.